They have been
trained to go through military exercises, carrying little sticks for
guns; to work and pull about small cannon, although the accounts say
nothing about their firing them off; and, what seems the most
wonderful of all, two fleas have been harnessed to a little coach
while another one sat on the box and drove! The whole of this
wonderful exhibition was so small that a microscope had to be used in
order to properly observe it.
The last instance of the intelligence of insects which I will give is
something almost too wonderful to believe, and yet the statement is
made by a Dr. Lincecum, who studied the habits of the insect in
question for twelve years, and his investigations were published in
the _Journal of the Linnaean Society_. Dr. Lincecum says, that in Texas
there is an ant called by him the Agricultural Ant, which not only
lays up stores of grain, but prepares the soil for the crop; plants
the seed (of a certain plant called ant-rice); keeps the ground free
from weeds; and finally reaps the harvest, and separating the chaff
from the grain, packs away the latter, and throws the chaff outside of
the plantation.
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